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1The 17th annual conference Hradec Days of Social Work will be held under the auspices of Dipl.-Pol. Jana Maláčová MSc., the Minister of Labour and Social Affairs. 

Social Work as a Tool for Human Rights´ Enforcement and Experience from the Field of Social Work during Coronavirus Crisis

Global definition of social work formulated by the International Federation of Social Workers emphasises the principle of human rights as one of the key principles of social work. Social workers should enforce fundamental and inalienable human rights of all human beings according to the Proclamation of Federation of Social Workers about Ethical Principals. They should respect natural value and dignity of all people and their individual, social and civil rights. According to the Code of Ethics of the Society of Social Workers of the Czech Republic the social workers should ensure respect of human rights for groups and individuals in practice as they are reflected in documents to social worker practice, in particular in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in the United Nation Charter of Human Rights and the Convention of Child´s Rights and other international declarations and conventions. They should also by governed by the Constitution, the Charter of the Fundamental Rights and Freedoms and other Acts of the Czech Republic, which derive from these documents.

National and international documents show that human rights should be a starting point to the guide of practice as well as the aim of social work. According to the commentary of the global definition of social work it should contribute to the enforcement of the first, second and also the third generation. The rights of the first generation include individual civil rights for example the right of movement and residence, privacy, the right of freedom of expression or freedom from arbitrary detention or political rights, which includes the rights to vote. The second-generation rights focus on social, economic and cultural rights, including the rights to the adequate level of education, health care, living and a minority language. The rights of the third generation focus on newly defined collective rights for example the right to the healthy environment, the right to reduce economic inequalities between developing and developer countries or minority rights. As stated in the Declaration of the International Federation of Social Workers on Ethical Principals, thus the enforcement of human rights is not a simple mission at all, because it might be complicated to ensure a suitable level of balance between mutually colliding human rights – for example with individual rights or collective rights or civil rights or cultural rights. How is the social work prepared to expand its scope and to focus on also on “new human rights “of the third generation in addition to the first and second generation?

The enforcement of human rights in terms of social work is becoming increasing difficult due to the current nonlinearization of the society. The ubiquitous global pressure to curb the welfare state and the growing number of individual and meritocratic value that leads to the increase of socialinequalities and poverty on one hand and on the other it questions the legitimacy of helping to poor ones. States are less and less focusing on the human rights´ guarantee and on the contrary they pay more attention to the enforcement of duties and sanctioning those who fail to fulfil civil duties. In this context financial dependence of social work on the state can lead to the fatal question, how to enforce clients´ rights in society that is increasingly expecting people to be controlled rather than to support them and initiate changes at the mezzo and macro levels. And therefore, is largely unknown how the future of social work will be affected by the coronavirus pandemic COVID-19.

In the context of the pandemic, the threat of strengthening of various forms of disciplinary power cannot be ignored, justified by the need to protect the members of the society against the risk endangering their health or their lives. A question arises, whether a broad constellation of control and discipline-oriented manifestations of the action of so called “biopower “would not favour the maintenance of health of the capitalist economy over human rights. Such a shift could further curtail the rights of the most vulnerable groups of people.If this black vision is fulfilled, therefore is possible that it would provoke an activation and collective self-organization of several social movements, with the aim to promote social changes for the benefit of vulnerable groups. And there is another key question: Will social workers be part of them or not?

The topics of the conference:

1. Dilemmas among individual and collective rights and possibilities of their solution

2. Enforcement of human rights in the context of economic pressures

3. How to teach social work learners about human rights?

4. Dilemmas among cultural and civil rights in the context of social work with different cultures and possibilities of their solution

5. Dilemmas among reducing of risks in clients’ lives and their human rights and possibilities of their solutions

6. Participations of clients during their rights´enforcement

7. Experience in the field of social work during the coronavirus crisis

8. 8th Section: Social Work as a Tool for Human Rights´Enforcement - International Issues of Social Work

 

prof. Walter Lorenz, M.Sc., Ph.D.

Walter Lorenz is a qualified social worker (LSE), taught social work at universities in Ireland (Cork) and Italy  (Bolzano) and on retiring became contract professor at Charles University, Prague. He has written on intercultural pedagogy and political aspects of social work in various European contexts. He co-founded the European Journal of Social Work and Social Work & Society.